A 24-year-old Pacoima man was detained Thursday on suspicion of beating to death a 3-year-old girl, and the dead child's mother was also being sought as a possible suspect, the Los Angeles Police Department said. Marcos Santiago was taken into custody after Fire Department officials reported they were holding a child-abuse suspect at a house in the 12800 block of Glenoaks Boulevard, police said. When the officers arrived at the residence about 12:40 p.m.

A woman accused of abandoning her newborn boy in a Boyle Heights garage was ordered Friday to stand trial on one count of felony child abuse. Luminosa Morales Gomez, 26, surrendered to police July 28, the day after she gave birth to the boy. Gomez told authorities that she would not have been able to work if she had to care for the child. The infant is being cared for by state child care officials. Gomez faces a maximum six years in prison if convicted. She is scheduled to be arraigned Aug.

Two San Fernando Valley women were being held Thursday on suspicion of endangering their children by leaving them alone in unfit homes, Los Angeles police said. Saundra Crockett, 33, of Sunland, was booked at the Van Nuys Jail on suspicion of child endangerment, said Helen Lloyd, an LAPD spokeswoman. She was being held in lieu of $50,000 bail. In a separate arrest, Shannan Flynn, 23, of Tujunga was booked at Van Nuys Jail on one count of child endangerment. Her bail also was set at $50,000.

The expected penalty came at the end of a short, low-key hearing. Maria Barajas, a 31-year-old woman with a history of child abuse, was ordered Wednesday morning to serve 25 years to life in prison for shaking and fatally beating her 19-month-old daughter. The lengthy term was the only option the law allowed and beyond that, it was a fitting sentence, Superior Court Judge Katheryne Stoltz said.

The trial of a Hollywood man accused of beating his 2 1/2-year-old son to death went to the jury Wednesday, with the defense arguing that his girlfriend--already imprisoned for the crime and then freed--may have been the killer after all.

With all she'd been through, Maria Barajas knew better than to violently shake her 19-month-old daughter, a prosecutor told a jury Wednesday during closing arguments in the woman's murder trial. Child welfare workers had twice taken Barajas' children away after allegations of abuse, she had completed years of counseling and parenting classes and was specifically taught about the danger of shaking a baby, Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter Korn said.

Bit by bit, they reconstructed Lindsay Gentry's life, and what they believed caused the severely disabled 15-year-old girl to wither away and die. "This was a child who was abused and neglected," said Deputy Dist. Atty. Kathleen Cady, during closing arguments Monday at the retrial of Lindsay's parents in Van Nuys. For years, Cady contended, Michael and Kathleen "Katrina" Gentry failed to give their daughter enough food, and the girl eventually starved to death.

A year and a half before his bone-thin daughter died, Michael Gentry said he believed that parents had the right to kill their children if it was in everyone's best interest, a witness testified Thursday. Monna Wagner, a former legislative aide, said Gentry came to her Palmdale office in 1994 and said "he wanted legislation that no one had the right to investigate any allegations against the family."

A Van Nuys man convicted of beating his 5- and 6-year-old daughters with a leather belt has been sentenced to nearly a year in jail, the Los Angeles city attorney's office said Thursday. Brian Keith Malone, 31, was found guilty of two counts each of unlawful corporal punishment, willful cruelty to a child and battery, City Atty. James K. Hahn said in a statement.

The trial of a Hollywood man charged with the beating death of his 2 1/2-year-old son opened in dramatic fashion Tuesday with the defendant's former girlfriend telling the jury she once pleaded guilty to the boy's killing because she feared for her life.